What's new
AllBuffs | Unofficial fan site for the University of Colorado at Boulder Athletics programs

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • Prime Time. Prime Time. Its a new era for Colorado football. Consider signing up for a club membership! For $20/year, you can get access to all the special features at Allbuffs, including club member only forums, dark mode, avatars and best of all no ads ! But seriously, please sign up so that we can pay the bills. No one earns money here, and we can use your $20 to keep this hellhole running. You can sign up for a club membership by navigating to your account in the upper right and clicking on "Account Upgrades". Make it happen!

Les Miles sounds off on USC

Jens1893

Club Member
Club Member
Junta Member
Well worth reading. Especially like Mandel´s point about the strength of the SEC. We know the conference is tought as ****, you don´t need to push that down our throats every time you see a camera or microphone.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/stewart_mandel/07/06/miles.usc/index.html

OK, it's official. What once sounded amusingly intriguing has now become a critical necessity.

USC and LSU have to play for the national championship this season. It is no longer possible to envision any other satisfying conclusion.

The nation's strangest and most unlikely rivalry of the past four years -- one that has thus far played out entirely off the field -- reached a new level of bitterness this week when the Tigers' increasingly rambunctious coach, Les Miles, made some strange and derisive comments about the Trojans.

"I would like nothing better than to play USC for the [national] title," Miles reportedly said in a speech to a heavily pro-LSU gathering in New Orleans. "I can tell you this, that they have a much easier road to travel. They're going to play real knockdown drag-outs with UCLA and Washington, Cal-Berkeley, Stanford -- some real juggernauts -- and they're going to end up, it would be my guess, in some position so if they win a game or two, that they'll end up in the title [game].

"I would like that path for us. I think the SEC provides much stiffer competition."

Forget for a moment the numerous, logical flaws in Miles' diatribe (i.e., the fact the team he's bashing beat SEC West champion Arkansas 50-14 last season). Forget for a moment the seemingly arbitrary shots at innocent bystanders Washington and Stanford. (Is Pete Carroll out there dissing Vanderbilt and Mississippi State at his booster functions?)

The real question is, why is Miles so worked up in the first place about a school 2,000 miles away? The answer: because his fans are.

It's not uncommon this time of year for coaches to go on the booster-club caravan tour to drum up support for the coming season. And in playing to the crowd, it's not uncommon for said coaches to take a couple friendly jabs at one of their rivals. (Steve Spurrier was notorious for this during his time at Florida.)

Miles' barbs, however, weren't directed at Ole Miss or Alabama. They were aimed at a foe the Tigers haven't faced since 1984 and aren't scheduled to play in the near future. Without context, they seem to come completely out of left field.

Yet if you know anything about LSU fans, you know the only way Miles could have played to his audience any better is if he'd broken out a baseball bat and started busting open a Nick Saban piñata. (Miles, a surprisingly animated showman, reportedly told a similar crowd on Signing Day, "We have a new rival in f---ing Alabama!") Over the past four years, Tigers followers have become nearly as obsessed with the Trojans as they are their own team. One frequent message-board poster on the LSU fan site TigerRag even goes by the nickname "OverratedSC."

As you might guess, it all dates back to 2003, when the two schools both laid a claim to the national championship. USC, excluded from the Sugar Bowl, that year's BCS championship game, beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl to finish No. 1 in the AP poll. LSU, by virtue of its victory over Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, earned the top spot in the coaches poll.

It was hardly the first split title in college football's poll era and it probably won't be the last. Just like with Michigan and Nebraska in 1997, or Miami and Washington six years before that, the Tigers and Trojans were both officially recognized as champions.

But apparently, one trophy was not enough for LSU fans. Instead of basking in the glory of their school's first such championship since 1958, many Tigers zealots immediately began assailing media outlets like this one, furious that USC was stealing their thunder. Theirs -- as any LSU fan will tell you in excruciating detail -- was the only trophy worthy of official recognition because it was earned through the agreed upon BCS structure.

Such indignation only grew deeper over the two seasons that followed, with Tigers fans fuming at the mere suggestion the Trojans were going for a "repeat" in 2004 or a "three-peat" in '05, culminating with a set of LSU fans actually erecting a billboard near the USC campus to set the record straight.

But like a bad Roadrunner cartoon, the Trojans keep finding ways to stick it to their wanna-be tormentors, most recently stealing coveted running back recruit Joe McKnight out of the Tigers' own New Orleans backyard (and allegedly doing so with some illicit help from former USC-turned-Saints star Reggie Bush).

Which brings us to the present. The preseason mags have hit the newsstands, and the Trojans -- for the third time in four years -- appear to be a lock for No. 1. While there appears to be no consensus on No. 2, the most common choice -- including this writer's -- seems to be the Tigers. It makes sense. No two programs have recruited more pure talent over the past five years (at least according to the recruiting rankings) than USC and LSU. Both went 11-2 and won BCS games last year. Both have playmakers up the wazoo on offense. Both return most of the starters from their already dominant defenses.

Can you smell the possibilities?

LSU fans would presumably kill for a chance to exact revenge on a program that's caused them so much frustration the past four years. USC fans have never seemed particularly moved by the Bayou Bengals' badgering, but they certainly wouldn't mind the opportunity to shut them up once and for all. In fact, the first topic on WeAreSC.com's message board Thursday was devoted to why the Trojans' program is "better" than the Tigers'.

Now, LSU's coach has gone so far as to insert himself into a war of words previously waged solely in cyberspace (or on billboards). That's sure to work followers on both sides into a lather.

But it still doesn't explain why he's mocking USC's schedule.

TBC
 
Part II

In a follow-up conversation with reporters several days after his initial comments, Miles harped on a theme that's become almost nauseatingly redundant among SEC coaches over the past year: Why their league is so tough. Miles' view may just be the most zealous yet. If college football were to go to an eight-team playoff, he said, "there'd probably be at least four SEC teams in the top eight."

Seriously?

We've heard it. We get it. We've put it in bold type across the cover of Sports Illustrated: The SEC is the toughest conference. Florida proved that in the title game.

But it's not like the league is indisputably head and shoulders above everyone else. Perhaps Miles needs a reminder that two of his league's best teams last year, Arkansas and Tennessee, lost to the third- (Wisconsin) and fourth-place (Penn State) teams from the Big Ten in their bowl games. Or that the year before that, the SEC's champion (Georgia) lost its bowl game to the Big East's champion (West Virginia).

But apparently Miles' beef is not with the Big Ten or Big East. It's with those softies on the West Coast. Specifically, when asked by a reporter whether "something must be done about USC," Miles replied, "Should something be done about SC? Yeah. It might just have to be the system first, though." Translation: The "system" is presumably unfair because it allows a team like USC to waltz into the title game.

Such has become a common refrain since the Trojans' rise to dominance under Carroll: If USC played in a "real" conference, they'd lose xxx number of games. Regardless of how you feel about the Pac-10, this is a pretty idiotic sentiment seeing as the Trojans have continually beaten upper-echelon foes from those conferences under Carroll (including a 4-0 record against the SEC).

USC's easy "path" last year included a BCS team (Notre Dame) and two major-conference division champions (Nebraska and Arkansas). LSU's non-conference schedule, meanwhile, consisted of Louisiana-Lafayette, Tulane, Fresno State and Arizona. Under the BCS' old strength-of-schedule formula -- the one that shined so favorably upon the Tigers in '03 prior to its removal from the standings, the Trojans played the nation's toughest schedule; LSU's was 11th.

Nevertheless, Miles apparently felt moved to begin his BCS lobbying efforts in July (and to think people got on Urban Meyer for doing the same thing too early in November). That is, if you believe his speech was actually about lobbying.

It's highly unlikely Miles would actually concern himself with the possibility of his team being edged out of the national title game six months in advance. No coach in the country would ever presume his team will get that far -- not when they're busy freaking out about their shrinking depth at right tackle or the backup cornerback's summer-school grades.

So what, then, was the motivation behind his unexpected boisterousness? Here's a guess: He's covering his butt.

Yep. That's right. Miles' comments were one big excuse-in-the-making. He's seen the prognostications. He knows the experts are projecting a USC-LSU matchup. He knows his fans are foaming at the mouth for just such an outcome. And he's trying to diffuse those expectations -- and temper the possible letdown -- by saying, "Hey, I'd love to play USC, too, but if they get there and we don't, it's because we had to play Florida while they got to play Stanford."

You can read it between the lines in this follow-up comment to the Baton Rouge Advocate: "To say that the only achievement and the only positive ending is with one game and one game's ending, that's near-sighted, and that's a long way away."

Well, here's one person who's not letting you off the hook so easily, Les. You and your people have laid down the gauntlet, so now, you better make this thing happen. If the Trojans hold up their end of the bargain and reach the Superdome, we better see some purple and gold on that other sideline.

You worked up the crowd, coach -- now give 'em what they want.
 
He's definitely stuck out his neck, he has always been able to deliver - look at his wins over OU while he was OSU coach. Alot of Michigan alumni are saying that if they lose to Ohio State this year they are going after Miles. Also, things are really heating up with Saban at Alabama. Miles has not come out and said it, but he is pissed off about Joe McKnight, and the alleged help USC got from Reggie Bush.
 
He's definitely stuck out his neck, he has always been able to deliver - look at his wins over OU while he was OSU coach.

no he hasnt always been able to deliver....he also couldn't deliver against OU too when he said he would. 2-2 record doesn't say much, and include the fact that he just signed a new contract with OSU, extension and pay raise, telling the Poke faithful he would be there a long time and bring okie state to top of the Big XII and the world of college football, then 10-14 days later bolting for LSU.... les miles it the epitome of arrogance. couple that with his ego of having to be on page one all the time.... as I think that has more to do with spouting off about USC and Pete Carroll than anything else.....

he can coach kids and get them to play at a higher level though..... :thumbsup:
 
miles does seem like a bit of an odd guy, but when you consider their all time record v the sooners (17-77-7), 2-2 doesnt seem all that bad.
 
He's a loose cannon. He lucked into a GREAT situation at LSU.

:yeahthat: Lou Saban had that cupboard stocked when he ran to Miami. I wasn't sure if Miles' temprament was going to work in the Red Stick, but it seems to. He's had success and some of that has to be due to him. LSU is a HIGH stress job. Those cajuns don't take kindly to losing.
 
:yeahthat: Lou Saban had that cupboard stocked when he ran to Miami. I wasn't sure if Miles' temprament was going to work in the Red Stick, but it seems to. He's had success and some of that has to be due to him. LSU is a HIGH stress job. Those cajuns don't take kindly to losing.

When they better get used to the idea. CU is coming in a few years :smile2:
 
Yea the SEC is probably the best division but considering their record in bowl games, only marginally so. When the entire division is pre-ranked in the top 25 every year, rankings become a bit skewed... One year they should make the WAC, Sun Belt, and Conference USA represent the top 25 and nullify half the argument for the SEC being God's Conference.
 
no he hasnt always been able to deliver....he also couldn't deliver against OU too when he said he would. 2-2 record doesn't say much, and include the fact that he just signed a new contract with OSU, extension and pay raise, telling the Poke faithful he would be there a long time and bring okie state to top of the Big XII and the world of college football, then 10-14 days later bolting for LSU.... les miles it the epitome of arrogance. couple that with his ego of having to be on page one all the time.... as I think that has more to do with spouting off about USC and Pete Carroll than anything else.....

he can coach kids and get them to play at a higher level though..... :thumbsup:
That's a great record 2-2 considering the talent on OU, and what Miles had at OSU. As far as telling OSU he would be there a long time - how many have said the same and then bolted for something they thought was better. It will be interesting to see what happens if he can pull it off. As far as the arrogance thing goes you are right, but if you can back it up then you have the right.
 
Yea the SEC is probably the best division but considering their record in bowl games, only marginally so. When the entire division is pre-ranked in the top 25 every year, rankings become a bit skewed... One year they should make the WAC, Sun Belt, and Conference USA represent the top 25 and nullify half the argument for the SEC being God's Conference.

The pre-season rankings are BS anyway, but can unfortunately be quite important. Nobody knows how good or bada team truly is ON THE FIELD in July or August. All we and the so called experts can go by is how teams look on paper and we can only speculate how teams are going to replace the players who left, but yet teams can profit from a high pre-season ranking for quite a while.

And whether a conference´s bowl record does tell you everything about a conference´s strength can certainly be discussed also. Take Michigan last season. Once they lost against Ohio State and their championship dream was over, the fire was gone and they basically had nothing to play for in the Rose Bowl against USC.
 
And whether a conference´s bowl record does tell you everything about a conference´s strength can certainly be discussed also. Take Michigan last season. Once they lost against Ohio State and their championship dream was over, the fire was gone and they basically had nothing to play for in the Rose Bowl against USC.

That is possible, but in the end I truly believe that the Big Ten powers were very overrated. There was a HUGE dropoff in quality teams after Wisconsin - allowing the top three to walk through the conference with ease.

There was still a lot being made of that bowl game - and I would expect that USC also fell prey to losing some of that fire - but they still kicked the crap out of Michigan.
 
That is possible, but in the end I truly believe that the Big Ten powers were very overrated. There was a HUGE dropoff in quality teams after Wisconsin - allowing the top three to walk through the conference with ease.

There was still a lot being made of that bowl game - and I would expect that USC also fell prey to losing some of that fire - but they still kicked the crap out of Michigan.

Definitely agree about the Big Ten and I am not making excuses for the Wolverines, it´s just that I think that drawing conclusions from a conference´s bowl record can be very misleading and doesn´t tell you the whole truth about the true strength of a conference.
 
Last year, USC beat the **** out of Arkansas, who incidently beat out LSU for the SEC West. I think it would be wise for Miles to STFU.
 
Yea the SEC is probably the best division but considering their record in bowl games, only marginally so. When the entire division is pre-ranked in the top 25 every year, rankings become a bit skewed... One year they should make the WAC, Sun Belt, and Conference USA represent the top 25 and nullify half the argument for the SEC being God's Conference.

Bowl games are whatever that particular coach and team decide they are. If they place importance on them like CU at coach Mac's send off against the tarnished dome they play to their potential. If the coaches treat it as a reward to the players for a good year, like Mac did many years, who knows what you will get. I don't put a lot of weight on bowl games unless they mean something to the players and coaches rather than the fans.
 
Last year, USC beat the **** out of Arkansas, who incidently beat out LSU for the SEC West. I think it would be wise for Miles to STFU.

Yeah, it seems SEC coaches coaches (including Tuberville:huh:) can't seem to stop talking about this. It's starting to get very old. Just shut the **** up and play football.
 
i totally agree with superior's take on the merit of bowl wins. i have actually talked about this point with guys who have coached in major college ball. if you aren't playing for a national championship or in some kind of a statement game, then many coaches (at least the "good guys" among them) will let their team slack off a bit and enjoy the bowl festivities and such.

Mac often did this. and, i know from some guys that played for him that mallory did it some when he was here too. to paraphrase a guy on a couple of CU bowl teams many years ago: "when we went to the orange bowl, it was all business. we were there to work and try to win that game because we were representing the big 8. when we went to the hula bowl, we had a fantastic time. it was like a vacation."

and, another reason not to get too wound up about bowl games is the "let down factor." example: when CU didn't make to the title game in 01 and they had to "settle" for playing oregon, they mentally let down. oregon, on the other hand, was really pissed and had a better case that they should have been in the title game. so, CU came out a bit soft and oregon came out and freaking shelled that Buff team. all things being equal, that would never have happened. so, the "statement" game was one-sided.

another example of why bowl games aren't a good judge: remember when CU destroyed boston college in barnett's 1st or 2nd year? that was a Buff team that was extremely gifted and underperformed all year because of the internal turmoil of a coaching change and system change. they finally pulled it all together for that bowl game AND basically the whole boston college team was suffering from the flu. game over before it ever started...

i could go on for a few more paragraphs about the boise state win over ou and why it really doesn't prove anything, but i am in need of another cocktail...

GO BUFFS!
 
:yeahthat: Lou Saban had that cupboard stocked when he ran to Miami. I wasn't sure if Miles' temprament was going to work in the Red Stick, but it seems to. He's had success and some of that has to be due to him. LSU is a HIGH stress job. Those cajuns don't take kindly to losing.

this is perhaps the most intriguing dimension to this thread.

miles is clearly a bright guy who can get a lot out of a team (evidence how he was able to step up and make the bedlam series interesting).

however, it seems to me that instead of fcusing on what the condoms are doing, he might oughta worry about positioning himself for an undefeated season. if he can do that, then he will play who the bcs says to play. he can worry about show at that juncture.
 
when we went to the hula bowl, we had a fantastic time. it was like a vacation."

Leading to those famous words..."say Merry Christmas with our headgear(s)." I don't know about you, but it was embarassing to me to how few players were even paying attention to Skippy, let alone getting motivated by him. This is not intended to be a slam on Neu, but it's an example of how allowing TV cameras into the lockerroom of a game that clearly didn't mean much to the players.

this is perhaps the most intriguing dimension to this thread.

miles is clearly a bright guy who can get a lot out of a team (evidence how he was able to step up and make the bedlam series interesting).

however, it seems to me that instead of fcusing on what the condoms are doing, he might oughta worry about positioning himself for an undefeated season. if he can do that, then he will play who the bcs says to play. he can worry about show at that juncture.

I agree. I think he was just saying something to fire up the Boudreaux's...
 
The pre-season rankings are BS anyway, but can unfortunately be quite important. Nobody knows how good or bada team truly is ON THE FIELD in July or August. All we and the so called experts can go by is how teams look on paper and we can only speculate how teams are going to replace the players who left, but yet teams can profit from a high pre-season ranking for quite a while.
Yea exactly what I was getting at, preseason polls inflate certain conferences, the SEC being one of the main culprits.

Jens1893 said:
And whether a conference´s bowl record does tell you everything about a conference´s strength can certainly be discussed also. Take Michigan last season. Once they lost against Ohio State and their championship dream was over, the fire was gone and they basically had nothing to play for in the Rose Bowl against USC.
Yes individually certain teams play down during bowl games but aggregate conference bowl records still give us a fair measure of relative strength. which then becomes even more clear when we couple aggregates records with 3-4 year moving averages.

But ultimately unless some sort of elaborate ELO system is established and more importantly accepted, we don't have many measures better then bowl games to compare conferences. Knock it all you want.
 
But ultimately unless some sort of elaborate ELO system is established and more importantly accepted, we don't have many measures better then bowl games to compare conferences. Knock it all you want.

What does the Electric Light Orchestra have to do with college football?
 
Last year, USC beat the **** out of Arkansas, who incidently beat out LSU for the SEC West. I think it would be wise for Miles to STFU.

god the sec drives me insane, USC consistently beats the crap out of SEC teams, they are bitter.

Just for reference SC has beaten the Crap out of Arkansas 2 of 2 times 70-14 and 50-14 once when they won the SEC west, and shut out Auburn once at home and beat them a second time, both in years the won bowl games.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top